Daniel Goldstein is counsel to the National Federation of the Blind. (Courtesy of Brown, Goldstein & Levy)
(JTA) — To many who know her story, Haben Girma is a hero. In 2013, this daughter of Eritrean immigrants became the first deaf-blind person to graduate from Harvard Law School. Two years later she was part of the legal team that helped score a major civil rights victory… Read more »
Muslim students at an anti-Israel protest at the University of California, Irvine in 2006. (Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Nearly half the states in the country are considering legislation aimed at countering the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement. But critics say some bills are cause for concern, either because they seek to legitimize Israeli settlements or go so far in punishing boycott supporters they… Read more »
Tess Gerritsen When international best selling writer Tess Gerritsen writes a mystery, she is sometimes as surprised as her readers and the characters in her story at who did the dirty deed.… Read more »
(L-R): Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin of Chabad Tucson, Sassy Reuven, Marlyne Freedman and Oshrat Barel, director of the Weintraub Israel Center. (Yvette Critchfield)
It was perhaps the most daring hostage rescue mission ever attempted: a middle-of-the-night raid on a Ugandan airport terminal to retrieve more than 100 hostages. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Israel Defense Force’s historic raid on Entebbe, officially known as Operation Thunderbolt. On Jan. 24, veteran… Read more »
Marcie Sutland drew this illustration in 1966, highlighting the Tucson Jewish community’s annual fundraising campaign and its volunteer leaders.
It was a combination of dry desert air and the Arizona Jewish Post that brought Marcie Sutland’s family to Tucson more than 60 years ago. “When we were deciding to come out West” in the late 1940s, “I wrote to the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and somehow I got… Read more »
The Falkow family in 1955, clockwise from left: Lynne, Bess, Cantor Maurice, Richard and Deena (Courtesy Congregation Anshei Israel)
During holiday musaf services at Congregation Anshei Israel, Jack, Alan and Ian Strauss ascend the bimah to recite the priestly blessing. As the son-in-law, grandson and great-grandson of the late Cantor Maurice Falkow carry on their patriarch’s legacy, they cover their heads with their prayer shawls, raise their arms… Read more »
Stuart Mellan Seventy years! My how the world has changed! While we are always trying to keep up with these changes, we remain very much rooted in our values and our mission. Underlying our Federation’s work is the adage that “community doesn’t just happen, it has to be created,” which begs… Read more »
From left, Nathan Lewin, Sima Soumekhian, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Marc Zweben at the Char Bar in Washington, D.C., the kosher restaurant owned by Soumekhian and Zweben, May 2015. (Alyza Lewin)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – “When there was no Jewish justice on the Supreme Court,” Antonin “Nino”Scalia told me, “I considered myself the Jewish justice.” After Abe Fortas resigned in May 1969, there would be no Jewish justice on the court for nearly a quarter of a century, until President… Read more »
An oil rig in the Tamar natural gas field off the Israeli coast, June 23, 2014. (Moshe Shai/Flash 90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) – After years of false starts, Israeli negotiators went to Geneva last week for talks aimed at ending a long-running conflict with a regional adversary. It’s not the Palestinians. It’s Turkey. Once a key partner of Israel, Turkey in recent years has been a thorn in… Read more »
Bernie Sanders making his victory speech in Concord after winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary, Feb. 9, 2016. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernie Sanders is having a month of historic firsts. In New Hampshire on Tuesday night, he handily won the Democratic Party contest, becoming the first Jew to win a presidential primary. In Iowa, he became the first Jewish presidential candidate — the first non-Christian, even… Read more »
A photo of Kibbutz Shaar Haamakim as it was in 1963, when Bernie Sanders volunteered there for several months. (Ben Sales)
SHAAR HAAMAKIM, Israel (JTA) — Every morning, Bernie Sanders would wake up at 4:10 a.m. to pick apples and pears. Leaving the cabin he shared with a few other American college student volunteers, Sanders would have a quick bite of bread before heading out to the orchard. After 2… Read more »
A Hanukkah celebration at the Kitchen in San Francisco on Dec. 9, 2015. (Q Lam)
NEW YORK (JTA) – In the summer of 2011, Lizzi Heydemann returned to her native Chicago to establish a Jewish community loosely modeled on Ikar, the Los Angeles congregation where she had spent two years as a rabbinic intern. She set about harvesting email addresses and putting out the… Read more »
Jonathan Greenblatt, left, with the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, October 2015. (Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Framed by a slide of two young guys in jeans and tees playing ping-pong on the Facebook campus, Jonathan Greenblatt described an event hosted by the social media behemoth in Palo Alto, California, the week before. “Some of the stuff we’ve done has been really exciting, like… Read more »
The new entrance of the Holocaust History Center, sharing a plaza with the Jewish History Museum, will allow for easy traffic flow from one museum to the other.
In just over two weeks, Tucsonans will get their first look at the Rose and Maurice Silverman Jewish History Museum Campus, home to the newly expanded Gould Family Holocaust History Center as well as the Friedman Family Jewish History Museum, which also has been refurbished. The grand re-opening on… Read more »
When the performers of the Capitol Steps take the stage at the Fox Tucson Theater, there’s a good chance Barack Obama will sing a rock song, Joe Biden will sing a show tune and Chris Christie will dance. Even Vladimir Putin, shirtless, of course, cannot stay off the stage.… Read more »
Elaine Hall with participants from “The Miracle Project,” a theater and expressive arts program for people living with autism and other disabilities (Courtesy Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona)
If she didn’t have it all, Elaine Hall had a lot of it. A Hollywood acting coach at the top of her game, Hall worked with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and John Goodman. Her specialty was coaching children. Only one thing was missing. What she really wanted was… Read more »
(JTA) — The Iowa caucuses are over – and the first real test of the presidential candidates’ viability gave us more questions than answers. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, won the Republican caucus on Monday night, relegating Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire, to second place. Both Trump and Cruz ran… Read more »
David Adelman, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, introducing Hillary Clinton before a speech at federation headquarters, Jan. 25, 2016. (Josh Tapper)
DES MOINES, Iowa (JTA) – Ten minutes into her speech at the Jewish Federation of Des Moines on Monday, Hillary Rodham Clinton had a coughing fit. She popped a lozenge, but that didn’t help. After a few long seconds and still gasping for air, Clinton turned to federation president… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton participating in a town hall forum at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 25, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Hillary Rodham Clinton made her ability to talk Israel’s leadership down from military action a centerpiece of her foreign policy credentials. Clinton, appearing Monday evening at a town hall-style event at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, was asked to outline her foreign policy philosophy. Two of… Read more »
A still from “The Settlers,” which premiered Jan. 22 at the Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Shimon Dotan)
PARK CITY, Utah (JTA) – What is a settler? That’s the question that opens the new documentary film “The Settlers,” which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival here. Written and directed by Shimon Dotan, the film offers an answer almost immediately: a religious fundamentalist driven by messianic… Read more »
